Two Billion Heartbeats
by shadesofstory
Summary: What happens when the roles are reversed and Jane is worried for Maura's life? Probably a three or four shot. Get ready for baseball, gangsters and love. Because what else is there, right? ;) Rating is subject to change. But it's T for now.
1. Chapter 1

**Part one of a three? four? shot about what happens when Jane's worried about Maura instead of the other way around. Thanks for reading! I always love comments. Who doesn't, right? Enjoy :) **

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><p>Detective Jane Rizzoli was doing research, which wasn't all that unusual considering the wide range of victims whose murders she'd been tasked with solving. But that night, as she sprawled out on the couch in her apartment, she was doing medical research. And that was unusual.<p>

She ran her thumb and forefinger across her eyebrows, an old habit to release tension. Normally, she would just ask Maura about any questions regarding the human body. She dropped the file onto her lap and took a swig of her beer. Normally, she would just ask Maura questions about almost anything, actually, and the chief medical examiner would know. But that night she couldn't ask because Maura was on a date, the first she had been on with a guy who wasn't a total creep in a long time, and Jane was determined not to let work interrupt it.

"What do you think, Jo?" she asked the mixed breed bundle of fur that was currently curled against her side. "Because I think it seems a little ridiculous to be wasting my time reading all this crap I don't understand when I can just have Dr. Walking Google tell me in the morning."

Jo looked up, her ears flat with sleep.

"Glad we agree."

Jane stretched out on the couch, wrapping her long arms around the back of her head. She finished the last of her beer and let herself drift in and out of sleep while she watched the Red Sox game she had dvr'd. She knew that her team had won already, Frankie had taken all of about thirty seconds to spoil the ending at work that morning, and so she didn't fight it when the exhaustion from another long day overcame her before the eighth inning had ended.

She had a dream about Maura. Not weird- her subconscience was probably far more accepting than her waking brain of how deeply etched the doctor was in Jane's thoughts. But what was weird was the fact Maura was wearing a Red Sox jersey. It was just two of them, Jane and Maura, standing in a very empty and very magnificent Fenway Park. A familiar form in her hand distracted Jane enough that the teasing comment she was about to make that Maura wearing Pedroia instead of Vera Wang died in her throat. She gripped the ball in her hand. She felt the roughness of the laces. She realized she was on the pitching mound. Her best friend grinned at her from home plate.

"I think you're supposed to throw the ball at me, Jane," Maura offered, her tone an obvious attempt to mimic the sarcasm of the detective.

Jane smirked. "The word you're looking for is pitch, Maura. I pitch the ball to you, not at you. And be careful what you wish for."

Just as Jane wound up to pitch, Maura interrupted. "Aren't you supposed to yell, 'Hey, batter, batter or something?'"

"Okay, first of all, not unless I was 12," Jane answered, awkwardly coming out of her windup without letting go of the ball. "And second, don't talk while the pitcher does her work here."

Maura chuckled. Jane wound up and fired a fast ball low and over the middle of the plate. It thudded against the dirt and bounced to the backstop.

"You might wanna try swinging."

"I would have, but I read I wasn't supposed to attempt to make contact with the ball unless it was pitched in the strike zone."

"Why, Dr. Isles. I see you have a bit of a competitive edge after all."

Maura looked affronted. "I am simply attempting to comply to the specified set of rules."

"Just, that whole sentence, Maura. Crap like that shouldn't be said in Fenway. Swing the bat."

"I will, if you pitch a strike."

Jane wound up and released, the laces heating her fingers with their friction.

This time Maura did swing. And Jane knew immediately she was going to make contact. The wood cracked almost poetically against the leather and sent the ball flying straight back at Jane. She didn't have time to duck- the line drive slammed into her stomach traveling far faster than she had thrown it. All the air in her lungs was knocked out of her and she doubled over, fighting for breath.

The panic woke her up, and she clutched at her chest, still gasping for air. She had almost managed to calm herself back down when her phone vibrated loudly from the coffee table. Her heartbeat picking up still more speed, Jane grabbed the phone. 3:14 am. Maura was calling.

Jane tried to disguise the panic she knew must be filtering through her voice when she answered. It was probably nothing. She was probably just calling to talk about her date, assuming the detective would still be up mulling over the files from their most recent case. "Hey, Maura. What's up?"

"Jane," Maura whispered. And the little calm Jane had managed to regain immediately drained away.

"Maura," Jane answered, her voice louder than normal, almost like she was compensating for softer tone of her friend. "What's wrong?"

There was a distinct pause on the other end of the line, and then something that sounded like glass breaking. "Maura, answer me right now." Jane's felt ice clench against the frantic rhythm of her heart, and her voice reflected it with deadly tranquility.

"I'm stuck in my car."

"What happened? Did you crash?" She grabbed her keys and jacket as she spoke, rushing out the door without even bothering to turn the TV off.

"No. I..." she paused, her breathing growing more labored. When she spoke again, her tone was robotic. "Someone followed me after my date dropped me off at my car, which I had left at the lab. They forced me off the road, and now I'm stuck."

Jane jumped into her own car and started the engine before she realized she didn't know where to go. "Maura, where are you? Are you hurt?"

Another long pause. And then, quietly, "I'm in an alley off of Route 9. Jane, the man who followed me is getting out of his car."

"Maura, get out of the car. Get out of the car and run, right now." Jane ignored the drain in her chest, which continued to expand by the second. An eery silence hung on the other side of the phone. "Maura," she repeated, her voice almost a growl, "Get out of the car and get the hell out of there, now. I'm coming to find you."

"I already called 911. They told me to stay on the line with them, but I had to call you. I just wanted..." the usually articulate doctor seemed at a loss for words. Jane slammed the gas pedal down harder and flipped her siren on. Route 9. The Back Bay. Five minutes.

"You just wanted what, Maura? Keep talking to me, okay? Is he getting closer?"

"He has a club, Jane. Some kind of pipe. He's about to swing it at the back windshield of my car. The alley's too narrow for the doors to open. I can't get out."

The detective heard a sickening crash through the phone, and something inside her broke. "Maura," she screamed, partly into her cell and partly into the night. "Maura, please, answer me."

"I just wanted to make sure that if I only heard one more voice before I died that it would be yours," the doctor whispered.

And then the line went dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Gotta admit, waking up with emails about reviews and followers beats waking up to emails about pretty much anything else. So thank you all so much! Part 2 is up. It's dark and kind of graphic and you'll probably all hate me by the end, but I promise I don't hate these characters... and I believe in happy endings. So for whatever that's worth, there it is. :) You all have made my Friday a lot better! Hope you enjoy :) **

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><p>Jane dropped the phone into her lap and took the next corner at 45 mph. She had made it to Route 9, the section between the precinct and Maura's house that the doctor would have been driving on through the Back Bay before reaching Beacon Hills. Jane forced herself to slow down and pay attention to the street, glancing down every alley she passed. She focused on the task at hand- finding Maura. She did not let herself focus on what was most likely happening to her friend in that moment. Every time she saw another empty alleyway, an anger unlike any she had ever experienced rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. The reality of the situation slapped her in the face. But still, some part of her brain, the part that just woken up from a dream about baseball, wondered if this wasn't just some strange continuation of her subconscience.<p>

Because Maura couldn't be in this kind of danger.

Maura was supposed to be in her lab, spouting off useless information that Jane found interesting even though she pretended she didn't. Or at at home with her damn tortoise, organizing the mountains of overly priced heels that were filed neatly in her closet. Or at the Dirty Robber, sitting in their booth, eating Kale while secretly coveting Jane's burger.

She wasn't supposed to be trapped in alley. She wasn't supposed to have to think about whose voice she wanted to hear last before she died.

The agony of driving slowly enough to check each alley felt almost like a physical burn. Jane shook her head, banishing the image she had accidently summoned of Maura laughing at Boston Joe's after Jane gulped down her hot coffee too quickly and fried her tongue. Instead, she looked down the street and saw a car parallel parked on the road that had been sideswiped. Her stomach dropped, her heart paused while it decided whether to speed up or stop altogether. She forced herself to bite back the new batch of rage that rose, and she slammed on the gas, reaching the sideswiped car in seconds. She glanced down the alley and saw her best friend's Prius jammed between the narrow brick walls.

Hands shaking but eyes hardened, she threw open the door of her cruiser and sprinted into the alley, gun drawn. The back windshield of Maura's car was shattered, and, it took Jane less than a second to realize, so was the front.

"Maura," Jane called, sticking her head inside the car through the back. "Maura!"

Jane couldn't see into the front seat well enough to tell whether her friend was still there. She climbed through the window, the shards of broken glass cutting into her forearms and hands. Whoever forced Maura into the alley seemed to have fled the scene, but Jane registered the fact that all of her senses were still on high alert. Her breathe was coming too fast and her heart was beating too hard. She didn't care.

"Maura, please," Jane yelled, finally toppling into the car and pushing herself into the front seat, hoping against all her training for a good outcome that she couldn't think of an example of. She looked in the driver's seat. Maura wasn't there.

A sinking feeling settled into the pit of Jane's stomach as she took a shuddery breath and looked up into the darkness in front of the car. There, in a heap on the rough pavement of the alley, Maura was crumpled face down.

Jane felt a strangled cry leave her throat as she clambered out of the front of the car and slid off the hood. Blood dripped from her fingers, leaving a trail from where the glass had sliced into her palms. She dropped to her knees in front of her best friend and, as gently as she could, rolled the smaller woman onto her lap. All of the emergency medical training Jane ever had rattled to the front of her mind. But she couldn't process it. She couldn't think about anything other than the fact she was holding her best friend in her arms, and blood was seeping into shirt from somewhere and that somewhere was Maura. She pushed her own hair out of the way, and held the doctor closer, not daring to look at her face. She didn't want to see what kind of damage a pipe could do to Maura's cheekbones, her nose, her jaw. She did not want to see Maura Isles shattered.

The detective had seen thousands of awful things in her life. She thought that if Maura was gone, if she was dead, then the image of her friend's usually animated face bloody and still and slack would become the worst thing. But when she looked down at her body instead, when she looked down and saw the ice pick embedded in Maura's upper chest with a blood soaked note stuck between her jacket and the handle of the pick, that's when Jane knew she had seen the worst thing.

A sound unlike any she had ever heard left her throat like it had been torn out of her, and normally it would have scared her that she could feel that much, that she could be the source of an emotion that raw and all-consuming. But it did not scare that night. She thought nothing could ever scare her again. But then she heard a voice that was far too soft, and she realized she was wrong. Her heartbeat, so thunderous before, seemed to suddenly and thoroughly stop.

"Jane," the voice whispered again, and she forced herself to tear her eyes away from the ice pick and look at the face of best friend. The face that belonged to the voice.

The skin above Maura's left eye had been split open and blood drained down onto an already swollen eye and damaged cheek. The other side of her face seemed to have faired somewhat better, but a bruise marred the smoothness of her jawline, and blood was caked around her ear. Jane's vision slid out of focus, and it took all her remaining strength not to pass out. The doctor's eyes were closed, and for a second Jane thought she had only imagined the voice. "Maura," she whispered, hardly daring to hope, wondering if Maura would be in so much pain it might be better if she didn't have to feel it at all. "Maura, please. Please."

Jane lifted two bloody and shaking fingers to her friend's neck and pressed down as carefully as she could. There, barely strong enough to be felt at all, was an erratic and fading pulse. "Maura," she repeated, cradling her head in the crook of her elbow, "Maura, I know you're still alive. So please... I need you. Please talk to me."

Suddenly, Maura's eyes, startlingly hazel, opened. Maura's right eye was nearly swollen shut, but Jane watched as it still tried to focus on the details of her face. The detective felt her heart catch in her chest and tears fill her own eyes for the first time that night. "You found me," Maura whispered, her voice barely above the sound of breathing. "I knew you would find me."

Sirens that Jane had been ignoring in the distance grew closer. Red and blue flashes filled the alley. Help was coming.

"Of course I found you. I'll always find you."

"While I was waiting I had a dream about you," Maura whispered, her voice fading still further. "You were mad at Frankie..." the doctor's voice trailed off.

"Maura," Jane stroked her hand across her best friend's cheek, "Maura, finish telling me about your dream, okay?"

Maura's hazel eyes continued searching Jane's face, holding each detail, and Jane could almost feel the other woman's brain working, memorizing, processing. Jane realized what she was doing, and panic seized her again, the newest wave stronger than the last. "Maura! Don't do that. Don't look at me like this is the last time you're going to see me. Don't do that."

A hint of a smile grew on Maura's lips. "How did you know I was doing that?"

"I know you, Maura."

She blinked, too long and too slow, and for a second Jane was terrified her eyes weren't going to open again. But they did.

"You were mad at Frankie for ruining the ending of the game. So I agreed to let you teach me how to play baseball to cheer you up."

Jane let the hot tears slide down her cheeks. Watching her friends labored breathing, feeling the life seeping out of her, she had forgotten how to be strong. She had forgotten how to breath.

"Baseball, huh?" Jane's voice sounded foreign to ears. Too raspy. Too soft.

"I was really bad at it, Jane. But you were a good coach. You..." a shudder ran through her body, and she went rigid with pain. Jane held her more tightly, waiting it out. She felt what was left of her rationality wonder how much longer she could handle this without losing her mind. "You were proud of me for trying. You told me..." Another shuddering breath stopped her, and Jane watched the effort it took for her finish the sentence. "You told me I was brave."

And then the hazel eyes slid closed, and the sirens became deafening and EMT's sprinted into the alley and Jane felt strong arms pull her away from her dying best friend. She fought them. They won long enough to slide Maura onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance, but Jane stayed glued to her side, repeating the same phrase again and again, desperately hoping it would be the key to opening those eyes again, the key to turning back the hours to what felt like a lifetime ago when she was on the couch with Jo watching a game. A game she knew she would never be able to watch again if her best friend died tonight.

"You are brave, Maura," she repeated as the ambulance pulled into the hospital and she watched the doctors wheel the gurney away into the waiting O.R. "You are brave."

The doors swung closed. The haste and the urgency disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

Jane stood alone in the middle of the white hallway, tears streaming down her face, blood drying on her clothes, memories replaying on a loop in her mind.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello all! First of all, thanks for your patience. Seriously. Second, thanks for following and reviewing this story! It was originally going to be a three or four shot, but I've decided to make it a five (mostly because of your suggestions, so thank you for that!) Because why not lengthen it out a bit, right? Hope you all enjoy. Sorry about that last cliffhanger... Probably not sorry enough to change my habits though. ;)**

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><p>Jane didn't know how long she had been sitting in the chair in the waiting room before her mother showed up. She felt her before she saw her, Angela Rizzoli's comforting hands running over her shoulders and onto her back. She looked over at her mother. The older woman's eyes, lighter than Jane's, were filled with tears.<p>

"Janie," Angela said, "Vince told me about Maura. You haven't been picking up your phone, sweetie."

The detective nodded, her jaw set. "Sorry, Ma. I should have been the one to tell you."

"Is Maura going to be alright?"

"Uh," Jane clasped her hands and then clasped them the other way. She didn't know how to answer that question because of course Maura was going to be alright. There wasn't a reality Jane could accept unless Maura was alright. But she had seen the ice pick. She had felt the blood soak into her shirt and dry in her lap. She had held Maura as she was dying. So she didn't know if Maura was going to be alright. Which meant she didn't know anything anymore. "I don't know, Ma. She's in surgery right now. The doctor told me he would let me know as soon as he could, but that was..." Jane glanced at the clock. The numbers seemed to run together. "I don't know how long ago, I guess. A while."

Angela had grabbed her daughter's hand when she started speaking, and her grip grew stronger the longer Jane talked. Neither of them seemed to notice. Angela didn't respond right away.

"Vince and Frankie and Tommy are all on their way over here. They should be here soon."

"That's good." Jane's voice sounded hollow, even to herself. She cleared her throat. "I'm sure Maura would appreciate everyone being here."

The pair lapsed into silence. Jane pulled her hand away and stared straight ahead at the white wall in front her.

"Jane?"

"Hmm?"

"You're covered in blood, baby. I'm sure you would have time to run home and change before we hear any news from the surgeon."

Jane nodded. "I'm sure I probably would."

Angela sighed. "But you're not going to, are you?"

"No, Ma. I'm not leaving her."

"Janie, it would take twenty minutes to just get cleaned up a little bit, and your brothers will be here soon, and -"

"I'm not going home," Jane snapped, her voice loud enough to draw attention from the other people in the waiting room. She took a deep breath and her tone returned to the emptiness it was before. "I'm not going home until I know she's okay."

Angela turned Jane's face toward her, gently touching her cheek. "You're scaring me. I don't like seeing you like that, all bloody. It brings back too many memories of when you were the one that we were waiting for to come out of surgery."

Jane's eyes filled with tears for the second time that night. She blinked them back. "Ma, this isn't just blood. This is Maura's blood." She held up her shaking hands. "This is Maura's life. You said this is scaring you?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "This is terrifying me. I don't know how to think; I don't know how to move. The only thing I know how to do is sit here and wait for her surgeon. Okay?"

"Okay." Angela wiped the tears from her own face. "You know she's family to me too, Janie. I can't bear the thought of losing her either."

"I know." Jane tipped her head against the wall and let her tears finally, silently fall.

By the time the surgeon found them three hours later, the waiting room was filled with BPD and medical staff who had gathered to support their Chief Medical Examiner. Jane sat between her mother and Frankie. Korsak had found a seat across from them, and he absently flipped through an AKC magazine while he waited. Tommy had brought Jane a coffee, which sat untouched on the table in front of her. A dull murmur had grown slowly as people waited for the news, officers and medical staff who didn't know Maura as well made small talk in the corners. But when Dr. Taylor walked in, the room immediately stilled and silence fell once again.

"Detective Jane Rizzoli?" he said.

She stood up and walked over to him, her legs stiff from hours of sitting in the same position. "That's me."

"Dr. Isles has you listed as her emergency contact due to the fact that all living relatives are out of the country."

Jane swallowed the rudeness that threatened to rise with her impatience. "Right, I know. How is she?"

The doctor smiled, but Jane didn't miss the flash of uncertainty that passed through his otherwise clear blue eyes.

"She's alive, which in and of itself is a minor miracle in this case. The icepick entered through her second intercostal space and punctured her right lung. The second that happened, it began to cause a pneumothorax which put a potentially fatal amount of strain her heart."

Jane's own heart seemed to have gone numb. She forced herself to keep listening.

"However, because of the relatively quick medical attention she received, we were able to vacate the air from her chest cavity and repair the damage to her lung and her chest wall. If we had gotten to her even minutes later it would have been too late."

Angela, who had followed Jane, cut in. "But you did get to her in time then, right? You fixed the problem?"

Dr. Taylor looked at her. "That damage was repaired, yes. And if that had been her only injury I would be more confident in her prognosis of a full recovery, but several fractured ribs along with a fractured cheek bone and internal damage from the injuries she sustained from the pipe are less difficult to predict."

"What does that mean? I want to know everything." Jane's voice was almost a growl.

"It means we're going to leave her sedated, for now. A machine is breathing for her, and we're keeping an eye on the bleeding. Usually, these things are better left to heal on their own. However, if any of her internal injuries worsen we'll have to take her back into surgery immediately." Dr. Taylor paused and looked at the women standing in front of him. Their expressions of steely resolve were identical. "If she doesn't have any complications in the next 24 hours, then we should be out of the woods, and we'll start the process of waking her up. Until then, we'll keep a close eye on things."

Jane nodded. "Thank you."

"You can see her if you want." He glanced around the room. "We only allow one visitor at a time in the ICU, however."

Angela pushed Jane forward half a step. "Go on, Janie. You know you'll be the one she would want to be there for her."

Dr. Taylor nodded. "Follow me, then, Detective."

Jane looked back at her mom and then past her at the room full of faces of people she saw everyday. Dozens of people. And all of them were there for Maura, the woman who thought she didn't know how to make friends. A small smile etched itself into Jane's otherwise stony expression. She turned away and followed the doctor through the double doors and down the white hallway into the ICU. Nurses and patients stared at her as she passed, and she was suddenly very aware of the blood still covering her clothes. She stopped making eye contact and looked forward instead, focusing on keeping her breathing even and her gaze set on the back of Dr. Taylor's balding head. She was concentrating so hard that she nearly ran into him when he stopped.

"Here we are," he said, motioning to a door on their right. "Go on in."

Jane nodded in acknowledgment and mumbled a thanks. She pushed the heavy door open without looking in the window first. The image of Maura hooked up to a ventilator lying in a hospital bed would be forever seared into her mind- she needed to be ready when she saw it. She let the door swing shut behind her before she looked up, the beginning heat of new tears already prickling the corners of her eyes.

Maura was laying on the bed, the bottom half of her face obscured by the tube connected to the ventilator. Jane slowly crossed the room and sat in the chair next to the bed. Maura's hands were pale and still. Jane grabbed one, layering it between her own, holding on as tightly as she dared.

"Hey," she said, her voice a low rasp. "What a night, huh?"

The only reply was the consistent beeping of the heart monitor. Jane impatiently swiped at the tears that had found their way onto her cheeks.

"I was sitting out there in that room trying to think of all the stupid things I could say to try and make you laugh when you wake up." Jane said. "But the truth is all I could think about was this boring ass research I was looking at before you called me last night."

Jane automatically paused, waiting for Maura's normal chastisement of her swearing. None came. Jane bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted the metallic bitterness of blood. "Anyway," she forced herself to continue, her voice as gritty as sandpaper, "I was reading it for the case we've been working on with the old mobster whose heart gave out, and I was trying to find out, like, how many beats a heart usually has so I could average out that with his age and just... It was kind of stupid, I know. Such a long shot it probably wasn't worth putting myself through doing that kind of math, right?"

Maura's eyes stayed closed, as Jane knew they would. The swelling had worsened around her eye, and Jane wondered if the bruise on her jaw had darkened as well. The ventilator made it impossible to tell. She looked back at the hand she was holding. It had slowly warmed in her grip, and it at least felt like Maura again. She focused on that.

"I had to do it though because you know how stubborn I am, and we weren't getting a break in this case. Don't tell my mother I admitted to being stubborn, by the way, okay? Maura?"

Jane tore her eyes away from Maura's hand and forced herself to look at her face again. Her normally perfectly waved hair was tangled in a halo around her head and her left forearm had a massive bruise marring otherwise nearly porcelain skin.

"I'm always telling you to get to the point, and now I'm the one taking forever to spit it out. So here's my point, Maura. Here's what I found out."

Jane's eyes shifted to her best friend's chest; she watched the slow rise and fall of her breathing in time with the whir of the machines. "I found out that the average person's heart beats two and a half billion times before they die. I'm sure you already knew that, but just think about it for a second. Your heart isn't even close to that yet. Hell, you've probably got almost two billion beats left. Two billion, honey."

The heart monitor tripped for a second, showing a slight change in blood pressure, and Jane felt her own heart jump to her throat. The monitor calmed. Jane's pulse didn't.

"Please, Maura. I need you. I... I love you. Please use up all two billion beats before you go."


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello again, friends! I am so sorry for the delay. I would tell you all about the reasons why I haven't been writing, but that doesn't really make much of a difference at this point, so I'll just apologize again instead. Here's part 4 of what was originally going to be a 3 shot and now looks like it may have to turn into a 6. Oh well! Hope you all enjoy. And I always love feedback, positive and negative. Thanks for reading! You all make my day. **

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><p>Two hours later, Frankie knocked softly on the hospital room door. Jane startled. She had allowed a semi-sleep to overtake her as she sat, chin in hand, waiting for whatever it was that was going to happen. Her thoughts had been punctuated by the beep of Maura's heartbeats.<p>

"Hey Janie. Sorry to bug you, but I thought you would wanna know what's going on with the case."

Jane smoothed her eyebrows again, allowing her thumb and index finger to hover over her temples for a second longer than usual. She tried to push away the pressure of the grief that was building there, tried to erase all of her emotions. Because Frankie was right. She did want to know what was going on with the case. And she couldn't be a detective and the best friend of a victim at the same time.

"Thanks. I'll be out in a minute."

Frankie nodded and glanced at Maura before he ducked back out the door. His eyes were red too, Jane noticed. Somewhere along the line Maura truly had become a part of her family.

"Maura," Jane whispered, softly tracing the veins on the back of the doctor's hand. "I've gotta go figure out who did this to you." Her voice dropped further. "I'm going to get this son of a bitch before you wake up. And you're waking up in 22 hours, right? I promise I'll catch the bad guy within 22 hours if you promise to wake up as soon as I get back."

Jane smoothed a stray strand of hair away from Maura's face and leaned over, kissing her forehead gently. "Just stay alive while I'm gone, okay? Promise, Maura. Stay with me." She kissed her forehead again, lingering for an extra half of a second, lingering long enough to know that she was possibly seeing Maura alive for the last time.

And then, without looking back, she opened the hospital room door and caught up with Frankie in the hallway.

"Okay. What do we know so far? What did the note say?"

Frankie ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. "So far we don't have much. The note was... damaged because of the circumstances. But Chang figured out how to get the ink to show up again."

"What did it say?"

"An eye for an eye."

Jane stopped. "An eye for an eye? Like this was some kind of bullshit revenge thing?"

Frankie shrugged. "That's what Korsak and I thought, too. So we were going to try and find Doyle-"

"You can't find Paddy Doyle unless he wants to be found."

"Yeah?" And for the first time Frankie's demeanor lightened a little, the teasing glint in his eyes sparking. "Good thing he came to us then."

Jane felt a smile break through the tight grip she had been holding on her expression. "He's at the precinct?"

"Nah, he wouldn't take it that far. He's at Maura's. I was there keeping watch on her place when he showed up and demanded to talk to you."

"Okay. Well what did he say?"

"Nothin. That's why we don't have much. He won't talk to anyone but you."

"Well I guess I know where we're going then."

Frankie put a hand on her arm and they once again stopped in the sterile hallway.

"What?" she asked.

He nodded at her clothes. "You gotta change before you go, Jane. You're covered in blood."

Jane forced back the bile that rose in her throat. She hadn't forgotten about the blood on her clothes, exactly, but she had almost accepted it like a uniform. A reminder of what she was working for. But Frankie was right. It was time.

"Yeah. I'll run home and shower and meet you there in twenty."

"You sure you're okay to go alone?"

She attempted another smile, even though she was sure it probably looked even more fake than it felt. "I'm fine, Frankie. I'll see you at Maura's in twenty. Tell Korsak to wait at the station so he can keep working with Chang."

Five minutes later, however, Jane was sitting in the car with her mom. She had ridden with Maura in the ambulance to the hospital, which she realized as she started into the parking lot, left her with no choice but to ask her mother for a ride. So far, Angela had maintained the silent precedent that Jane set. Of course, it didn't last.

"Jane?"

She sighed. "Yeah, Ma."

"Maura's a lot tougher than she looks. She'll make it through this."

Jane forced herself to swallow the first retort that immediately sprang to mind. She let her mother's words sink in, and by the time she spoke her voice had dropped to a whisper. "But what if she doesn't?" She glanced at her mom, fresh tears again in her eyes. "What'll I do if she dies, Ma?"

Angela reached out and squeezed Jane's knee, her grip surprisingly strong. "I don't know, baby. I don't know what I would do without her either."

"I spend my life protecting the people in this city. It was my job to protect her, and I... I failed, Ma. I couldn't protect her." A lump that felt like rock was building in Jane's throat and making it harder and harder to swallow. But she couldn't let herself break down completely, not until the case was solved.

"I want you to listen to me, Jane Rizzoli," Angela said, and her voice was as strong as grip, "This was not your fault."

Jane pulled in front of her apartment and opened the car door.

"Janie," her mom called after her.

The lanky detective, her hair even more unruly than normal, stopped mid-jog and turned back toward her mother. "Yeah, Ma?"

"I mean it. This is not your fault."

She nodded and disappeared into the building.

Fifteen minutes later, after dropping her mom off at Maura's guest house, Jane walked through the front door and saw Paddy Doyle in the kitchen. One of his posse stood behind him, and Frankie stood across from them in the living room. All of them watched her as she walked closer.

"Doyle," she said, nodding his direction. "You wanted to see me."

His normally icy expression softened somewhat. "How's Maura?"

Jane shook her head. "No. You don't get to ask about her until give me something."

The ice returned full force. "How bout I give you a bullet through the head?"

Frankie stepped forward, between them. "Shut the hell up, you son of a bitch. You said you wanted to help Maura, not start something here tonight."

Doyle's friend moved protectively closer, but Doyle stepped past Frankie, never taking his eyes off Jane. "I did come here for a reason. But first, we're being rude. This is my associate, Colin McGrath." He motioned to the man behind him. No one moved. He continued.

"Anyway, I would normally take care of this sort of thing myself, but I worked out a little deal recently with some people who might frown upon me shoving an ice pick through a man's chest, even if that is what he did to my daughter."

Jane looked away, a wave of nashua washing over her as she listened to how easily Paddy talked about killing with an ice pick. How easy it would have been for someone to shove the tool into Maura's chest. The way the skin would have split and the bone would have broken. The way muscle and sinew crumpled as the metal found its mark. Swallowing back the bile that rose in her throat at the thought, Jane forced herself to once again lock eyes with Boston's most notorious mobster. He smirked at her revulsion.

"Are you kidding me, Paddy? You're playing CI? For who, the FBI?"

He frowned. "I think the line they use is 'need to know,' right? Well, you aren't need to know, detective."

The crony laughed. Jane silenced him with a look. She had seen him before, a big guy with a sallow complexion.

Jane sighed, her frustration mounting. "Listen, Paddy. I don't have time for your games and your riddles right now, okay? I'm trying to figure out who tried- and still might succeed- in killing Maura. So if you're interested in helping me then do it, but otherwise I've got more important leads to follow."

The last part was a lie. But it still seemed to have worked. "A man last week met with an unfortunate incident in which his heart seemed to have stopped working, seemingly at random. Are you familiar with who I'm talking about?"

Jane frowned. "The old guy who just dropped dead because his heart stopped beating? Yeah, Maura ruled it a suspicious death because she couldn't find any evidence of a natural reason his heart would have stopped. I was actually looking into his case last night when she calle-" she cut herself off abruptly. "What about him?"

Paddy smiled. "His name is Kieran Moran. Let's just say he was an old friend who had that one comin' for a long time."

"Moran as in the Moran crime family? Great. And you're saying you killed him?"

Paddy clicked his tongue. "I didn't say that, detective. I said he had it comin'. That old heart had been through a lot, and anyway, he was the one that coined the heart stopping for no reason thing. So maybe someone returned the favor."

Jane took a step toward Paddy. She had to stop her voice from shaking with the rage that had suddenly peaked. "Listen to me, you arrogant asshole. Someone did return the favor, and not to him. Someone stabbed Maura through the chest with an ice pick. Now who does that seem like they're returning the favor to? It's your fault this happened to her, Doyle. Yours. So obviously someone figured out you killed Kieran using his own MO, and they decided to try and kill Maura using your MO. Now who would be pissed enough about Kieran's death that they would try and take revenge?"

Paddy matched the distance Jane had covered, stepping close enough that she could smell the old liquor on his breath. "You won't always get away with talking to me like that, detective. Keep that in mind. But today I'm feeling generous. Moran had a son named Fergus. I'd start with him. Now, it's your turn. Tell me how my daughter is."

"She's in the ICU in a medically induced coma. And she's not your daughter, you bastard."

Paddy nodded to McGrath, who was still lurking in the corner. "Let's go."

McGrath stopped when he got to Jane. "If your friend doesn't have a daddy, like you said, then who's the bastard, detective?"

Jane jumped at him before anyone else in the room could react. She felt her fist glance off his ear and she used his moment of surprise to knee him as hard as she could in the groin. He dropped to the floor, breathless with pain. Paddy glowered at them both and then yanked McGrath up by his collar and dragged him out the door. Jane stared them out, her heart pounding with anger and adrenaline. She didn't realize Frankie had come up behind her until he put his hand on her shoulder.

"You okay?"

She shook her head. "No. Let's go to the precinct; I'll update Korsak on the way."

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><p><strong>P.S. Less case stuff and more relationship stuff is coming, I promise. :)<strong>


	5. Chapter 5

**I promised baseball, mobsters and love, right? Thank you all for the follows and reviews! As I've said before, and as is always becoming more true, you guys are the best. I took some of your suggestions into consideration this chapter, so I hope you enjoy! This is Part Five. I'm thinking Part Six will wrap it up. **

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><p>"Fergus Moran," Korsak said, slapping his picture up on the murder board. "Son of Kieran Moran and, according to everything I've been able to dig up so far, former mobster turned high school science teacher and little league coach."<p>

Jane stopped pacing back and forth in front of her desk long enough to frown at the picture of the younger Moran. "Bullshit."

Korsak raised his eyebrows. "Oh he's definitely worth a visit. He served time at Sing Sing in the 80s for a turf war he got caught up in in New York. But he's stayed clean since then."

"Or he hasn't gotten caught."

"What makes you so sure he's our guy? Doyle isn't exactly the most reputable informant."

"I know that," Jane said, her eyes never leaving the murder board. "But he's the only lead we've got. And if it wasn't him then I still don't know who did this to Maura, and I only have-" she checked her watch. "Sixteen hours left to figure it out."

Korsak studied the younger detective for a moment. The crease between her eyebrows furrowed more deeply than usual, and her normally bright eyes were clouded with worry and exhaustion. Anyone who didn't know her well would find this version of Jane Rizzoli intimidating as hell and unbreakable as stone. But he did know her well. And he could see she was barely keeping herself from falling apart. "Okay," he said, swinging his plaid sports coat over his sizable girth. "According to his wife, he's coaching a practice right now. Let's go get him."

The little league practice diamond Moran coached at in Southie was more dirt than grass. The players, who seemed to be 10 or 11-year-olds as far as Jane could tell, scattered to various parts of the field at Moran's barked command. He hit balls to the different positions, calling out a scenario every time. "One out. Runner on second," he yelled, and then cracked the bat against the ball. Jane tried to ignore the pain that rose in her chest at the familiar sound.

"Fergus Moran?" She asked, coming onto the field through the chain link fence dugout.

The coach turned his head and nodded in her direction. "I've only met one other woman who looks as good as you and dresses as bad as that. Which means you must be a cop."

Korsak stepped around Jane. "Okay, wiseass. Put the bat down. We have some questions for you about your father, Kieran Moran."

Moran kept the bat and smashed a ball into the outfield. "Runner on third! Two outs."

The anger that had been building in Jane since she saw Maura lying in the alley suddenly rose to the surface. She pushed past Korsak and covered the distance to Moran in three long strides, yanking the bat out of his hand the second she was close enough. She pushed it against his shoulder. "I want you to listen very carefully, Moran," she hissed. "I'm going to ask you a question. You're going to give me an answer. But you don't get three strikes with me; you get one. So it better the right answer. Got it? Now tell the team to take ten."

His face remained impassive. His double chin glistened with sweat. But he called out for the boys to take a break.

"Good. Now, did you attack Maura Isles last night in attempt to avenge the death of your father, Kieran Moran?"

A brief expression of confusion passed through the former mobster's features and then he did something even Jane hadn't been expecting. He laughed.

"Detective, I'm a high school science teacher. My grandson is playing third base right now. Why the hell would I attack some woman I don't even know to avenge the death of my father, who died of heart failure?"

"Don't play stupid with us, Moran. You know there's an active investigation surrounding the circumstances of your father's death. And you know Maura Isles is Paddy Doyle's daughter. So I'm going to give you one more chance before I let Detective Rizzoli here do whatever it is she's thinking about doing to you with that baseball bat," Korsak said.

Moran glanced at Jane, who adjusted the bat. He sighed. "Look, kids. Maybe once upon a time I was a scary ass son-of-a-bitch who believed in the sins of the fathers. But then I went to prison and the only sure way I knew of not getting sent back was to get out of the life. As for my father, God rest his soul, he had a death a lot worse than the one he got comin' to him. So, yeah, as far as I'm concerned, Paddy Doyle can rot in hell. But I'd be stupid to think ole' Kieran wouldn't be rottin' right down there along side him."

More than anything, Jane wanted him to be lying. But she watched him as he talked, squinting into the afternoon sunlight, his faded Red Sox hat tipped back on his balding head, and her gut told her he was telling the truth. She believed him despite herself. Her grip on the bat tightened along with her throat. "Okay, Mr. Moran. Then where were you last night from midnight until four am?"

He snorted. "I was at home with my wife, asleep. And you don't have to believe me or her. Ask my eye doctor. He told me I can't drive at night anymore because of my old man vision. Now can me and the boys get back to practice?"

Jane threw the bat down at his feet and turned away, striding back toward the unmarked as quickly as she could. Korsak caught up to her at a jog.

"I'll check his alibi. But my gut says he's telling the truth," he said, opening the car door.

"Yeah, mine too. Which means we have nothing." Her voice broke on the last word. Korsak diligently pretended not to notice.

Instead, he drove faster. "Why don't I go back to the precinct and see if Chang's got anything new for us from Maura's car or the crime scene, and you go to the hospital and check in on Maura?"

Jane shook her head. "I can't do that, Korsak. I've gotta do my job, and my job is working the case, not sitting around at the hospital."

Korsak looked at Jane. Her hands were clasped together so tightly her knuckles had turned white. "That wasn't actually a suggestion, Rizzoli. I'm dropping you off at the hospital, and I'll call if there are any new developments."

Jane felt her anger spike again. "You can't seriously pull rank on this one, Vince! I belong at the precinct going over evidence."

"And if there was any evidence to go over then that's where you'd be. But until there's something more to work with, you belong at the hospital with your best friend." Jane opened her mouth to argue again, but Korsak cut her off. "That's the end of this discussion."

Five minutes later, Korsak pulled into the hospital parking lot. Jane got out of the car and slammed the door without a word. She counted the steps it took from the front door to Maura's room, focusing on the green and white tiles of the floor, focusing on the tennis shoes of nurses that walked by, focusing on anything other than the fact that she knew she couldn't stop the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her for much longer. One more shaky breath got her past the doorway and into the room, where she collapsed into the armchair next to the bed, looked at the still, unconscious profile of Maura Isles, and sobbed.

Her desperate breaths rattled through her chest and racked her body, consuming her from the inside out. She cried harder than she had in years and then harder than that. She felt her shoulders shaking and her heartbeat pounding in her ears, but she couldn't stop. She couldn't breath and she couldn't think and she couldn't stop. Because if she wasn't solving the case then she wasn't helping Maura. She couldn't accept a reality in which there was nothing she could do while her best friend hovered between life and death.

"I'm so sorry, Maura," she choked out, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't get there soon enough to stop you from getting hurt. I wish I could go back. I wish for anything but this right now, okay? Okay? I would trade places with you in a heartbeat if I could, you know that right? I would do anything to keep you safe. I would do anything to keep you safe, but I failed, and now I can't do anything to make you better. I can't even catch whoever it was who did this because I don't know who it was. I don't-" Jane forced back another shaky breath and kept going. "I'm sorry I don't know how to turn back the clock and stop this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I don't know how to protect you. I just... I'm so sorry. I don't know how I would keep living if you-" her voice caught on the last word, and she hated herself, but she finished the sentence. "Died."

The harsh buzz of her phone temporarily shook Jane out of her grief. "Rizzoli," she answered, her voice like corrugated steel.

"Janie?" Frankie's voice pulled her even further out of the black hole that had set up camp in her chest. "A uniform found a pipe in one of the dumpsters in alley. It had blood on it."

Jane nodded. "Probably Maura's. Which doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know."

She could almost hear Frankie smile through the phone. "You keep shooting my news down before I get to the punchline. There were two blood types on the pipe. The first one, which was on the majority of the pipe, was Maura's. But there was a nick in one end, and Suzie found a second blood type in the surrounding area. Like the guy cut his hand when he swung or something. We don't have a DNA match yet, but we're still running it. I'll let you know as soon as I find out."

Jane stood up. "I should come back to the precinct."

"No," Frankie said, his voice firm. "Stay there. Maura needs you more than we do right now. I'll call as soon as the test results come in, okay?"

The machines in charge of Maura's vitals chirped, and Jane jumped toward the bed, but they settled back into their routine almost immediately. "Yeah, okay," Jane answered, not taking her eyes off of the monitors. "Let me know."

She hung up the phone and slowly returned to the arm chair, scooting it closer to the bed. Slowly, she reached out and took Maura's hand. The warmth she had felt it in it that morning was gone. She slowly rubbed the heat back in, gently massaging each of her fingers, rolling them back and forth between her own.

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><p><em>A warmth that prickled in the fingertips of her right hand slowly seemed to spread up through her palm and into her arm. She was nowhere and everywhere at once, but whatever had started the warmth seemed to be the anchor keeping her here. Keeping her somewhere. <em>

_Sounds seemed to exist in this reality, along with darkness. Pain was here too, it thrummed around the blurry edges of her existence, but it was kept at bay. It seemed to be pushed away from the hazy nucleus of her awareness, and she found somewhat to her surprise that she wasn't bothered by it as it made its ominous circles. There had been something that bothered her though, something that had penetrated her fathomless incubator. She tried to remember what it had been, but it floated around her like everything else, almost within reach but just out of grasp. She reached for it again. It danced further back, deeper into the out of focus darkness. For the first time since arriving here, she felt herself grow anxious. She needed to remember what had bothered her. And so, with all the focus she could gather from the abyss, she reached out again. And this time she felt a tug, a latching. She had not yet felt wary here, but she did now, as she edged closer to the memory. The one bother in her otherwise neutral cosmos. _

_And then she opened it and she remembered. The crying. The tears had been for her, the heartbreaking sobs that seemed to pull the still lurking pain ever closer to breaking through her protected circle. She remembered the voice, gravelly and hoarse like an old freight train running too hot. "I'm sorry," the voice had said. It had begged and gambled and broken. She tried to pull away from the memory, desperately jolted back from the slap of vivid life in the darkness, all consuming sorrow in the void. Her connection to the memory severed, plunging her back into the nothingness that she knew hadn't felt this empty before. _

_She gasped at the shock of the change and the gasp opened a different memory by accident, a memory that pulled itself into her as though she had beckoned it, and she heard the same voice. The same freight train voice, but it was quieter this time. The rasp it held was more contained. And suddenly the memory provided her with a name, a name for the voice.__"Please use up all two billion beats before you go," the voice whispered._

_Jane. _

_And she wondered where the voice had meant by go. _

_Jane._

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><p>Jane woke to the sound of her phone buzzing. She sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and checked the monitors. They were the same. She looked at Maura. She was the same. She felt her mood. It was the same.<p>

"Rizzoli."

"The blood belongs to Colin McGrath," Frankie said, his voice at a higher pitch than normal. "Colin McGrath, Jane. Doyle's guy that was at Maura's house."

Panic fluttered in her chest, but Jane turned around slowly, not taking the phone away from her ear. "I know," she said, her stomach plummeting so far and so fast she could barely catch her breath.

"What? How do you know?"

"Because he's standing in front of me right now."

And then Jane dropped the phone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you all so much for sticking around to the end! You're all the best. Here's part 6 of 6. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think- I welcome the good, the bad and the ugly. :) ****Happy reading!**

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><p>Jane slowly backed away from McGrath, trying to get between him and Maura. He noticed and raised the gun he was holding higher. She looked at his hand. It was steady; no sign of weakness. His lips pursed into a small, slug-like smile.<p>

"Always protecting the beautiful doctor," he said, his voice as oily as his skin. "Tell me, Detective... Are you willing to die for her?"

The back of Jane's legs bumped against the side of Maura's bed. She stopped. "You know Paddy is going to kill you for this, McGrath. He's going to tear your worthless head off. He'll break your fingers one at a time before he chops them off and makes you watch him feed them to a dog."

McGrath sneered. "Listen, bitch-"

"I see we dropped the formality of calling me detective."

The older man's face splotched with anger. "You're pretty cocky, aren't you? All I have to do is pull this trigger, and all that macho shit will be blown away."

Jane raised her eyebrows, unable to figure out why she had decided antagonizing the crazy man with a gun was the best course of action here. But she started it, so she knew she had to keep going. "You know what, McGrath? You would be right about that, except I don't have any 'macho shit.' It's called intelligence, which is something you obviously not familiar with if you can't comprehend the fact that Paddy is going to kill you for this."

"You don't know Paddy like I do. We've been working together since the 60s. We're like brothers."

"Huh. Really? Because I would have characterized your relationship more like a master and his ass. And I mean that in the biblical sense of the word."

Jane watched McGrath's grip tighten around the gun. His hand shook slightly with the extra effort. "Ever since that bastard daughter of his came around, she's been his priority. He doesn't even know her! He didn't even want her, and suddenly she's more important than his true family. I've taken bullets for him. I've dragged him, barely alive, to her fuckin' house so she could save him. I've killed for him. And now I'm going to kill for me."

He took a step closer, and Jane suddenly knew exactly what she had to do. "Paddy will never forgive you for killing her, McGrath."

The man shrugged. "Then maybe he won't find out it was me. I'll tell him I got here too late to save her."

Jane frowned. "You really think he's going to buy that? Because you know what I think that sounds like, you punk ass bitch? I think it sounds like the load of shit that it-"

The gunshot drowned out the rest of her sentence. Jane, who had been watching his hand for the smallest flicker of movement, dove toward him at the same time he decided to pull the trigger. She felt the unmistakable burn of a bullet across her shoulder and then the sickening thud as she slammed into McGrath full force. She sent them crashing over the chair she had been sitting in and into the far wall. Through her pain and the rush of adrenaline that had spiked as she jumped into action, Jane was aware of the fact that Maura's heart monitor had picked up speed. She didn't know if that was good or not. She was also aware that because McGrath had been clutching the gun so tightly his grip would be compromised. It would be easier to tear the weapon away from him as they fell. She reached for it, yanked, and pulled it free. She struggled to her feet, gun in hand, only seconds after she hit the floor. He stayed down, the shock still etched across his face.

"Don't move. I mean it. I would be more than happy to get an excuse to shoot you."

A barrage of nurses and doctors suddenly burst into the room, alerted to the problem by the sound of the gunshot. Jane knew, the second she pushed McGrath too far, that if she could avoid being killed by the bullet, the gunshot itself might save both her and Maura. A member of the hospital security staff was among the crowd, and he immediately ran to Jane's side, calling for more back up. But then Jane realized the doctors weren't looking at her or McGrath. They were gathered around Maura. Feeling panic fresh in her chest once again, and ignoring the pain throbbing in her shoulder, Jane handed her cuffs to the guard, who slapped them onto McGrath.

She turned to face her best friend, whose bed was obscured by the people gathered around it.

"What the hell's going on?" Jane asked into the noise.

A nurse turned to look at her. "She's waking up. This happens sometimes, patients fight off the sedation before we had scheduled for them to. She panicked because of the breathing tube, so we're taking it out before she chokes herself."

"What? I thought she couldn't breathe on her own," Jane yelped, hating the helplessness of her own voice. "You can't take it out if she can't breathe."

The nurse sighed. She looked tired, but patience lingered in her eyes. "If she's fighting the tube, chances are she'll be okay without it. If not, then we can sedate her again and re-intubate. But the way she's struggling right now, aside from causing her pain, could redo the damage the surgery was intended to fix."

Jane felt tears fill her eyes. "But she's scared. She shouldn't be awake yet."

"Here," the nurse took Jane's hand, pulled her toward the bed, and put the detective's hand in the doctor's. "Stand right here, and don't get in anybody's way."

But Jane had stopped listening the second she had seen Maura's eyes were open. She gripped her fingers as tightly as she dared and she stared down into her friend's face, drinking in the fact that she was alive, that she was breathing and that she looking back at her. Maura's eyes, one still nearly swollen shut, searched Jane's face. And suddenly Jane knew she hadn't panicked because of the breathing tube. She was a doctor- she would known it would have only been there if it was necessary. She panicked because she heard the gunshot. She saw Jane fall, and she didn't know whether she had been alive or dead. Even after being stabbed in the chest with an ice pick, the question in Maura's eyes wasn't about herself. It was about Jane.

Two hours later, after the doctors had given Maura a light sedative to prevent her from moving too much after the trauma of removing the breathing tube, and after Jane had been dragged into a separate room to have the graze on her shoulder stitched up during which time she was coddled by her mother and punched multiple times by Frankie attempting to show emotion, she was back at Maura's bedside.

Watching her friend breathe without the help of machines, just the gentle rise and fall of her chest, was almost hypnotic in its comfort. Jane ran her thumb and forefinger across her eyebrows again, pushing away the tension that had built in her temples. She was tired.

"It's normal to be overly aware of vital signs after watching someone nearly die," Maura said, startling Jane so much that she nearly dropped the doctor's hand. "The impulse will fade soon."

Jane nodded, fighting the emotion that swelled in her chest at the sound of Maura's voice and the color of her eyes. "Good. Because it makes me feel a little creepy."

Maura smiled, squeezing Jane's fingers. "Are you okay? I saw that man shoot at you, and you fell..."

Without thinking about it, Jane leaned forward and ran her thumb across the worry that wrinkled between Maura's eyes. "I'm fine. Now that you're awake I'm fine."

Maura looked up into Jane's face, closer than it normally was. The layers of concern and relief in her dark eyes felt deep enough to get lost in. "For a minute, in the alley, I thought you weren't going to get to me in time," Maura whispered. "I thought... I didn't know if I could hold on any longer without you."

"I wish I could promise I would always get to you in time," Jane said back, her voice frozen gravel, her eyes so intense Maura almost had to look away.

"I know you'll always try, Jane. That's more than enough. You give me as much as you can; I know that."

But it was Jane who looked away first, sitting back in her chair. "It almost wasn't enough this time. Ask Korsak, I almost bashed some some old ex-con's skull in with a baseball bat."

"He had a baseball bat or you were thinking of using a baseball bat?"

"Well, he had the bat until I took the damn thing from him. So both?"

Maura smiled. "Language, Jane."

Jane made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and sob. "I never thought I would miss hearing that."

"I would have corrected you earlier when you called that man a 'punk ass, bitch' I believe it was, but I had a breathing tube down my throat. And he most likely deserved it."

This time Jane knew she was laughing. "He definitely deserved that, Maur. Besides, that's not really my phrase. I use it when I need a little extra bravery."

"You mean when you're about to do something extra life-threatening. Whose phrase is it?"

"I borrowed it from Frost."

Maura nodded slowly, her eyes darkening slightly with the memory of loss. They sat in silence for a moment before Maura spoke again. "Thank you for finding me, Jane."

She shrugged. "I just wish it could have been sooner so I could have used that pipe on McGrath."

Maura smiled, but her voice stayed serious. "I don't just mean in the alley. Thank you for finding me in general. For coming to my house when you were scared about Hoyt. For trusting me with your mother and your brothers. For being my friend. Thank you."

Jane smiled. "Thank you for letting yourself be found."

"You look tired."

"You look like you got stabbed with an ice pick."

Maura laughed, wincing. "Don't be funny right now."

"Oh come on. Like I can just stop being funny."

"Well, maybe not. But you can stop being tired. Come up here and lie down."

"What?" Jane's heart rate immediately picked up in surprise. "No. I don't want to hurt you."

Maura shook her head. "You won't hurt me."

"It's a little bed, Maura."

"Don't be a prune. I'll scoot over."

Jane raised her eyebrows and slid onto the bed, carefully avoiding all the wires and tubes. "Don't be a prune? Like the dried fruit?"

"I've never quite understood that phrase to be honest."

"Yeah, that's because it's don't be a 'prude.' Honestly, that's not even a hard one."

"Don't be mean to compensate for feeling vulnerable."

Jane looked at her, one eyebrow raised. "I do not do that."

Maura laughed, wincing again. "Yes, you do."

"Okay," Jane chuckled. "Maybe I do that. Occasionally."

"You know what I've been thinking?" Maura asked, punching Jane lightly on the arm.

"No," Jane answered, punching back. "But the anticipation is killing me. Please do tell."

"That it might actually be fun if you taught me how to play baseball."

Jane propped herself up on her elbows, eyes lit. "Seriously?"

"Well," Maura answered, "as long as you promise not to let me win or anything."

"Puh," Jane scoffed, laying back down on the pillow. "Okay, I definitely don't do that."

"Yes, you do."

Jane looked at her, unable to stop herself from grinning. "Okay, maybe I do that, too. Occasionally."

"Mmhmm."

"But only for you."

Maura looked at Jane, answering her smile with one of her own. On impulse, Jane leaned forward and kissed Maura's forehead, just below her hairline. And then the detective, close enough she could feel Maura breathe instead of having to watch, laid back down and closed her eyes. Maybe if she was lucky she would have a dream about baseball.


End file.
